


Grian's How-to Guide on Saving the World

by Evercovi



Category: Hermitcraft RPF, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Government Conspiracy, Shady Businesses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:29:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29883210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evercovi/pseuds/Evercovi
Summary: When you’re facing the end of the world, what do you do?Grian didn’t expect the answer to be to take fate into your own hands and save the world yourself, but that was pretty much what he found himself doing when what could only be described as an apocalypse happened. And. Well. He was already knee-deep in a city-wide conspiracy, he might as well get his hands dirty and clean up the mess, right?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Grian's How-to Guide on Saving the World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So some background before we jump in: just think about this as a modern AU / turf war but it's serious sort of thing (though to say it's a modern AU is technically incorrect - but to say anymore would be heavy spoilers for the ending :) )
> 
> Disclaimer: despite how this work is tagged this story will solely be about the characters/personas the CCs play as, and hence nothing in this work will be about the CCs themselves. Any actions of the characters in this story is not representative of them as people and should not be interpreted as such. If any CCs ever express discomfort with fic just let me know and this'll get yeeted
> 
> Enjoy the story!

“Hand over the cure,” Scar says, backlit by the headlights of the helicopters. Wind blasts at Grian’s hair as he steps backwards further to the edge of the roof, a hand outstretched, teeth bared in a sharp grin.

He spits out a lock of hair. “Why?” Grian snarls, a maniacal half-laugh bubbling up his throat. “You have me surrounded. This cure,” he says, and gives the tube in his hand a little shake, watching Scar’s eyes dart to the corked glass tube. “Isn’t going anywhere.”

“You’ve tricked us for long enough,” Scar tells him in a light-hearted tone, but there is an undercurrent of anger that simmers underneath his normally gentle voice. “We are not taking any second chances.”

Grian raises an eyebrow. “That’s mostly your fault, honestly,” he mutters out of the side of his mouth, watching with a vindictive sort of pleasure as Scar’s eyes flash in barely-contained fury.

“Just hand it over,” Scar all but snaps.

Grian couldn’t help but laugh, hysterical and just slightly unhinged as he hops onto the parapet of the roof.

“Why?” He asks over the roaring wind, and hears clicking as guns are loaded and set into place. His hands start to shake, his mouth grows dry, and his hands start to grow numb but not quite, pins and needles pricking his fingers.

“What do you mean _why_ —”

“I can smash this on the ground right now,” Grian says, head spinning spinning spinning, thrusting his arm over the side of the roof. “And what can you — you can’t stop me.”

“You won’t,” Scar says, sounding so assured and just a hint confused. Because why would Grian do that? The tube in his hands contained something he’d spent the past year of his life working on and something the world so desperately needed.

But here’s the thing: Scar’s a brilliant politician.

Not a scientist.

“You need that — if you don’t, you’ll have to start from scratch,” Scar continues, as if he still had the upper hand, as if Grian was the one losing here and not him -

Grian sinks to his knees, laughing, scared and hysterical and furious. Scar’s lost the upper hand the moment he stepped onto the rooftop.

“Watch me,” Grian crows over the wind, a threat, a dare in a particularly ruthless game of truth and dare. And yet, through the panic, something insistent wriggles at the back of his mind. Something was wrong. Why did Scar insist he hand over the cure? After all, why does he want it? Why would he need it? Unless — 

Alarm flashes in Scar’s eyes and he takes a half-step forward. “No — don’t you _dare_ ,” Scar says, and the last puzzle pieces click in Grian’s head.

“You _need_ this,” Grian says in dawning realisation, and Scar’s eyes narrow. “You need this. You — you need this, because you messed up, you messed _up_ —”

Scar raises his hand, flicking his wrist. “Just hand it _over_ ,” he snarls, furious and slightly afraid, and a bullet embeds itself into the concrete beside Grian’s knee, powder and rock spraying across his thigh.

Grian flinches, nearly sending him off the side of the roof. His heart rate skyrockets, thrumming as fast as a hummingbird’s wings in flight, and his hands start flashing cold-hot-cold-hot and a cold sweat gathers at the back of his neck. Oh god, _Scar_ wants to kill him, Scar wants to _kill_ him —

“Hand it over, or you die,” Scar says again, with unnerving calmness, but there is a fearful glint in his eyes and his hands are shaking ever-so-slightly.

Wind blasts at Grian’s hair as he kneels on the concrete parapet, twelve stories in the air, mind racing racing _racing_.

The world held its breath.

“So, what would it be?”

\---

Almost a year ago at eight o’clock at night, Grian sits in a mostly empty lab with an inoculating loop in hand.

“All this sounds horribly boring,” Mumbo tells him from his chair about five metres away. Grian resists the urge to kick him. He picks up the petri dish from the table, places the hot loop at the edge - the agar hissing and melting — and does the final four streaks, before placing it back down. _Then_ he kicks Mumbo.

“It’s better than sitting at a table all day staring at wires until you go cross-eyed,” Grian retorts, a smile on his face. This whole biotech versus engineering argument was nothing more than a way to bicker, now, and neither of them took offence at it.

“Mhm,” Mumbo hums, disbelieving. “At least engineering makes sense.”

“What part of Biotech doesn’t make sense?”

Mumbo flings his hands out in an exasperated manner.

“Everything, for goodness sake —”

“Yea, sure, whatever you say,” Grian says, snickering, taping the six petri dishes together with masking tape. “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

“I’m calling Iskall,” Mumbo calls after him as Grian walks to the room at the back of the lab, where the incubators were. “They’ll agree with me.”

Grian shuts the incubator door. “They won’t,” he says, walking back out. “They’ll agree biology is better than engineering. After they say computer science is clearly superior.”

Grian kicks his chair under the table and grabs the bottle of ethanol that rests on the little shelf above. He sprays down his workbench, wiping it clean with a paper towel.

“Absolutely not,” Mumbo says stubbornly. “Engineering is the superiorest of all subjects.”

“Say that one more time, I dare you,” Grian threatens, grinning, and points the ethanol spray bottle in Mumbo’s direction.

“Engineering is superior.”

“Engineering is _not_ superior.”

Grian slips off his gloves, tossing them into the bin and collects his logbook, scribbling down the last of the procedures.

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Mumbo replies smugly, while he helps to toss Grian’s files back into his satchel. Grian shoots him a glare over the sink where he was scrubbing his hands clean.

“Thank you,” Grian says primly, grabbing his bag from Mumbo’s hands with sopping wet hands he didn’t bother wiping dry, watching as Mumbo makes a face.

“Please dry your hands,” Mumbo pleads with pain in his voice as water drips down onto the floor tiles. 

Grian ignores him, opening the door. He gestures for Mumbo to go first, a tiny, mischievous smile on his face and a playful glint in his eyes. Mumbo reluctantly does so with a suspicious glare born of years of prankage and trolling.

A suspicion that is well-founded when Grian flicks his fingers in Mumbo’s direction, splashing the taller man’s face with water.

“OI,” Mumbo starts indignantly and Grian lets go of the door handle, his laughter bouncing off the walls of the corridor.

The phone’s dial tone rings in the air, loud and persistent, as Grian and Mumbo slip through the glass doors of the building into the cold night air outside. There is a click as Iskall picks up.

“Iskall,” Mumbo says immediately, sulking. “Grian’s being mean. He’s saying engineering sucks.”

There’s a crackle as Iskall shifts, placing their phone on the table. “It _does_ suck, though. Tell him he’s correct.”

“See?” Grian says, giving Mumbo a smug smile. Mumbo sulks even further.

There’s silence as Mumbo and Grian walk across the campus.

“Did you call me just to prove a point?” Iskall asks, sounding somewhat exasperated when no one speaks.

“Yes,” Grian replies instantly. “Mumbo was saying how engineering was superior to biology, and I will _not_ stand for this — for this _slander._ ”

Iskall sighs. “Mumbo. My friend. You should know by now. Computer science will and always will be the greatest.”

“No, it — why do I feel like I’m being ganged up upon?” Mumbo says. Grian could feel Iskall’s smug smile through the phone screen.

“Don’t you have your internship tomorrow?” Iskall asks curiously. “Why are you out this late?”

Grian starts to shrug, and realises Iskall can’t see him. “Project stuff.”

“He was culturing his cells,” Mumbo says with a smug smile and Grian rounds on him with murder in his eyes.

“You — no — you’re just being _mean_ at this point -” Grian stammers, jokingly irate, and Iskall cackles in the background. “I was culturing _bacteria,_ you know the difference, and you still have the audacity to —”

“Anyway, project stuff, right?” Iskall cuts in. “Aren’t you going to that internship place that’s trying to create new plants or something?”

“Yeah,” Grian says as he and Mumbo turn the corner to the Mechanical Engineering department building. “I mean, not really creating _new_ plants, but like. Really fast growing ones.”

“Oh. Isn’t that bad, though?” Mumbo asks, pushing the glass doors to the building open. “I can see so many ways that can go wrong.”

“Eh. Scientists have been doing modifications like this for years. They’ll definitely do years of testing on this — like, testing the ecological impact of new plants and stuff.”

They stroll through the lobby and turn into a hallway lit up with bright fluorescent lights. Mumbo pushes the door to the lab open and they enter, Grian leaning against a dust-covered wall — phone in hand — and Mumbo walking to the line of white linoleum workbenches.

“Apparently Scar’s backing the research,” Iskall says casually, as if they didn’t just drop a bombshell.

Mumbo twists around and his neck gives an audible _crack_ that makes Grian wince. “Scar the mayor?”

“We only know one Scar,” Iskall confirms.

“Scar? _Scar? Why?_ ” Mumbo continues. “Why would he? I don’t understand — isn’t he the CEO of ConCorp? Why would he take interest in something like this?”

“Scar’s always been big on environmental conservation,” Grian explains as Mumbo collects his stuff. “I’m pretty sure the ConCorp headquarters runs on green energy.”

“And this is technology that people are saying will save the world,” Iskall reminds them. “No wonder Scar’s backing it. He’s rich enough for it, anyway.”

Grian crosses his arms and chews on the inside of his cheek. “It’s still sus, though.”

Mumbo slips open a drawer, and takes out an entire mess of circuits and breadboards and places it inside a plastic box he managed to scrounge up from somewhere. “How so?”

“Scar’s a —” Grian sighs. “He’s an environmentalist, that’s… that’s for sure.”

“Are you still salty he called mycelium useless in that one state interview?” Iskall asks, an audible smile on their face. And even though they phrased it as a question, it wasn’t one.

“Yes!” Grian says, irritation bubbling up in his chest. He waved his hands, pacing up and down the lab. “He said — he said mycelium is useless, right? But mycelia plays a super important role in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems because they decompose plant material — and not only that but they contribute to organic fraction of soil and their growth releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which helps to regulate the carbon cycle —”

Mumbo raises an eyebrow, looking slightly afraid as Grian continues to rant.

“And no — wait wait wait, Scar’s wrong anyway, because he thinks Mycelium is a species of fungi. It's not, it's the vegetative part of a fungus — the vegetative part is made out of _hyphae_ which are collectively called a _mycelium._

“So now that’s done, let's look at fungi as a whole, shall we? Fungi helps to decompose dead plants and stuff — which releases ammonium into the soil, and that ammonium becomes nitrates via nitrification by nitrifying bacteria such as _Nitrosomonas_ and _Nitrobacter_ and those nitrates are super important for the growth of plants that Scar thinks are more important than the lowly mycelium —” Grian takes a deep breath. Iskall huffs in almost awed laughter.

“And the fungi — they’re vital members of the nitrogen fixation process, and guess what? Without nitrogen fixation there will be _no_ inorganic nitrogen compounds, which are required for the biosynthesis of all organic compounds — organic compounds, that I may add, include your _DNA_ —”

“Grian. Grian.” Iskall interrupts. Grian pauses in his rant to glare at the phone. Iskall may not be able to see him, but it was more about the principle than anything else. “We’re your friends and we _do_ love you, but it's 8.30 at night and we understood _nothing_ of what you just said.”

Mumbo hums in agreement, walking over with the plastic box tucked underneath one arm. Grian sighs.

“Scar’s okay, I guess,” he says, rubbing his cheek. “He’s an admirable businessman and politician — but.”

“But?” Mumbo asks.

Iskall snickers. “Butt,” they say, and Grian laughs while Mumbo huffs, exasperated, corners of his mouth twitching upwards.

“Butt,” Grian repeats.

“For goodness sake, we are — we are _adults,_ ” Mumbo mutters — covering his face with his hands — and Grian has to lean against a wall, laughing so hard his stomach started to hurt.

“Let’s go back, you have your internship tomorrow,” Mumbo says, making a shoeing motion like he was herding children — which. Yeah. He probably was.

“Are you excited?” Iskall asks him. Grian frowns, holding the door to the lab open as Mumbo turns off the lights.

“A bit,” he says. “Mostly nervous, though.”

Could you get fired from internships? Grian really hoped not.

“It’ll be fine,” Mumbo reassures. “Maybe you’ll even meet Scar.”

Grian scowls while Iskall laughs.

“Don’t jinx it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Do let me know if you think this is an idea worth pursuing :D
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> \- What Grian's doing in the first part of the chapter is called 16-streak, where you literally do 16 streaks on an agar plate. its to isolate pure bacterial colonies from a sample.  
> \- Mumbo's wrong when he says Grian's culturing cells. Grian's culturing bacteria, and there's a pretty big difference in how you culture the two. Grian told him the difference once, and Mumbo remembered and used it to purposely annoy him, because what are friends for?


End file.
